Posts tagged "media criticism"
  1. 11 months ago 

    Kalifornia Dreamin:

    (Source: colorlines.com)

  2. 1 year ago 

    I’m not sure why but I find this video extremely troubling.  It’s not so much the references to BDSM - consenting adults are free to do whatever they choose - as the marshal displays of power, overly simplistic song narrative clashing with the video’s and the mode in which this type of music is supposed to be enjoyed.  Under the euphoric effects of some empathogenic drug (E or some derivative) I could imagine myself jumping around like the women in the video, lost in a world of rhythm and sensual pleasure but a question arises: What conditions are necessary for one to enjoy such a pleasure focused state?  

    Like the orgies of late Rome this music signifies - if not embodies - the excesses of Empire.  Steve Aoki and his horde of makeup clad, nameless and ethnically stereotyped women ravers represent the beginning of the end.

  3. 1 year ago 
    "

    All wars are terrible, but some must be fought. A democracy is strengthened when its citizens are confronted with the raw truths that follow from the choices of their elected leaders.

    Read more

    "
    - Steve Coll on Wikileaks

    (Source: newyorker.com)

  4. 1 year ago 
       Blake Hounshell over at FP has a misleadingly titled post, “The Burqa Ban: It’s Complicated.” In response to a well-argued piece by David Rothkopf, Hounshell writes: I find it disconcerting and dehumanizing not to be able to read people’s emotions, to tell if they are frowning or smiling, or even know what they look like. Some Muslim women may find the anonymity liberating or believe that their religion commands it, but full veiling is one cultural practice that I would be more than happy to see killed by globalization. Hounshell’s discomofort with burqa clad women may say more about his priviledges as an American male than about the women’s own oppression: World traveling Saudi women with their Armani clad husbands seem pretty “globalized” to me. The simple fact that Hounshell hasn’t learned how to interact with these women suggests his intolerance.  It seems unfair that these women should repudiate a significant cultural and religious tradition so as to comfort a handful of white men.

     

     Blake Hounshell over at FP has a misleadingly titled post, “The Burqa Ban: It’s Complicated.”

    In response to a well-argued piece by David Rothkopf, Hounshell writes:

    I find it disconcerting and dehumanizing not to be able to read people’s emotions, to tell if they are frowning or smiling, or even know what they look like. Some Muslim women may find the anonymity liberating or believe that their religion commands it, but full veiling is one cultural practice that I would be more than happy to see killed by globalization.

    Hounshell’s discomofort with burqa clad women may say more about his priviledges as an American male than about the women’s own oppression: World traveling Saudi women with their Armani clad husbands seem pretty “globalized” to me.

    The simple fact that Hounshell hasn’t learned how to interact with these women suggests his intolerance.  It seems unfair that these women should repudiate a significant cultural and religious tradition so as to comfort a handful of white men.

     
  5. Notes: 8 / 1 year ago  from fletcherlives (originally from motherboardtv)
    fletcherlives: motherboardtv: As our civilization grows, so does the number of distinct categories we have for the humans that populate it. Once upon a time it was just adults and children. Now, we have infants, toddlers, tweens, teens, young adults, adults, etc. The latest addition to this is emerging adulthood, a term that refers to being in one’s 20s as a distinct life stage. It seems like it could be a reasonable category, but what is responsible for it being defined only now? Read more here An interesting article on Motherboard suggests that the defining characterisitscs of “20-somethings” is our interconnectedness via the internets.  It’s certainly arguable that my generation conceptualizes property (music, movies etc.) and ideas in a very different way than our predecessors due to the interwebs. And I could probably be convinced that these technologies allow a natural predisposition to wallow in self-doubt become a recognized stage of development. I am unconvinced, however, by the assertion that a new stage of development hasn’t arisen because it lacks the permanence of natural law: Like the section of humans it seeks to explain, this new developmental category ofemerging adulthood rests on shaky foundations. The fundamental characteristic of it, that not everyone goes through it and even those that do have entirely different experiences with it, goes directly against the basic premise of developmental psychology. I think any good developmental psychologist will tell you that none of these stages are concrete, but rather social fictions with constantly shifting meanings and interpretations.  There is far more fluidity and change - or “nebulousness” as the author writes - in real human development than textbooks would let on.   

    fletcherlives:

    motherboardtv:

    As our civilization grows, so does the number of distinct categories we have for the humans that populate it. Once upon a time it was just adults and children. Now, we have infants, toddlers, tweens, teens, young adults, adults, etc. The latest addition to this is emerging adulthood, a term that refers to being in one’s 20s as a distinct life stage. It seems like it could be a reasonable category, but what is responsible for it being defined only now?

    Read more here

    An interesting article on Motherboard suggests that the defining characterisitscs of “20-somethings” is our interconnectedness via the internets.  It’s certainly arguable that my generation conceptualizes property (music, movies etc.) and ideas in a very different way than our predecessors due to the interwebs. And I could probably be convinced that these technologies allow a natural predisposition to wallow in self-doubt become a recognized stage of development.

    I am unconvinced, however, by the assertion that a new stage of development hasn’t arisen because it lacks the permanence of natural law:

    Like the section of humans it seeks to explain, this new developmental category ofemerging adulthood rests on shaky foundations. The fundamental characteristic of it, that not everyone goes through it and even those that do have entirely different experiences with it, goes directly against the basic premise of developmental psychology.

    I think any good developmental psychologist will tell you that none of these stages are concrete, but rather social fictions with constantly shifting meanings and interpretations.  There is far more fluidity and change - or “nebulousness” as the author writes - in real human development than textbooks would let on.   

     
  6. 1 year ago 
    "Is ‘Al Qaeda’ a buzzband?"
    - Carles
  7. 1 year ago 
    "Maybe NYTimes is now just some sort of complex art piece/satirical commentary on modern journalistic techniques."
    - Carles
  8. Notes: 2 / 1 year ago 
    "Are we entering an era where the NYTimes can write a ‘cultural commentary piece’ on how young hipsters are getting married, and choosing to customize their dessert options, breaking free from old society’s expectation of ‘mainstream cake’?"
    - Carles
  9. 1 year ago 

    Bludgeoning with Noise

    There’s an interesting post over at FP about the importance of translators in Afghanistan and the difficulty soldiers have in spreading their goals:

    I once asked the lieutenant colonel in charge of the Korengal Valley how many messages he thought were lost this way. I wagered that at least 40 percent of his troops’ words were not getting through to Afghans. He thought it was more like 50 percent. At the time, January 2010, his soldiers were literally delivering U.S. President Barack Obama’s new strategic message to Afghans. I watched them announce that the United States would soon begin withdrawal and that Afghans needed to take responsibility for their own future. If half that message were lost in translation, which half would you want it to be?

    Overall, the piece reads like an executive summary of Restrepo, but the final lines are beautiful:

    Occasionally I asked the soldiers how they believed their messages would ever take hold. The standard answer was that it was all about “repetition, repetition, repetition.” Say it enough times and the Afghans will get it. That might work. But if no one understands the words, the Americans will simply be bludgeoning the Afghans with noise.

  10. 1 year ago 

    E-Smackdown of the Day

    From a piece at Forbes:

    Is the journalism profession only about dancing on graves? If it is, then your only choice would be to write your own obituary now and end it all.

    [skip]

     Why you want Sidney Harman to fail is bitterness at the fact that your business cannot support what you fantasize about doing—spending eight years unaccountably working on a Moby Dick-length piece predicting the demise of everything, at a seaside villa with pool waitresses and an open bar. But whining about that is not going to help.

  11. 1 year ago 

    Hacking: The Future of Journalism?

    With fear, intimidation and the state mounting serious threats to journalists it is little wonder that alternative sources of information gathering are arising.  

    Wikileaks and Blog del Narco[There is a translate button on the top left] offer two interesting models of what the future of journalism and investigative reporting might be. Each site goes outside of the norm of typical journalism reporting, suggesting that the relationship between media, the state and crime needs to be readdressed.  In an age of anonymous reporters - who may fear reprisals - do they share the same obligations as reporters at established media sources?  Or are they something else: Hackers?

    FP describes the work of Blog del Narco:

     Blog del Narco launched in March, includes postings from both drug traffickers (such as warnings and even a beheading) and law enforcement (crime scenes accessible only to the police and military). In one case, Blog del Narco helped lead to a major arrest, when a video posted detailed a prison warden’s system of setting inmates free at night to carry out drug cartel murders.

    The AP tracked down the blogger to find a 20-something year-old computer security student from Northern Mexico - not exactly a hardened journalists with years of experience and dozens of contacts.  

    And there is little surprise that traditional media outlets view sites like Wikileaks or Blog del Narco with hostility, they’re changing the game and who can play it.

  12. 1 year ago 
    "

    “With the Bush people, there were no illusions; with Obama there were high hopes,” says Mark Feldstein, the journalism professor who kept Jack Anderson’s papers from the FBI. “There was a lot of swooning in the media over Obama, and a lot of that translated into presumptions about policy. But the reality is that all administrations, all governments, view the press with skepticism if not paranoia. All governments want to control the agenda.”

    To view the administration’s aggressive pursuit of leakers and journalists as an artifact of the current presidency, or as some kind of extension of Obama’s innate intolerance for airing private disagreements, is to miss the greater influence that career government officials have over which cases to bring, and whom to subpoena.

    "
    - From a disturbing piece in Washingtonian Magazine about Obama’s prosecution of whistle-blowers and reporters
  13. 1 year ago 
    Documents of Mass Destruction ?

    The most reasonable interpretation of the Wikileaks documents I’ve seen yet.

  14. 1 year ago 

    Will Your 7 year-old Do Time?

    Only if their black…

    An interesting post over on Sociological Images details the ways in which race frames our interpretation of deviance:

    Leontine included two links: one to a Today show story about a 7-year-old boy who took his family’s car on a joyride and got caught by police, and one to a CNN story about a 7-year-old boy who took his family’s car on a joyride and got caught by police.  Different 7-year-olds.  One white, one black.

    [snip]

    But there is good evidence that people, beginning as children, internalize the stereotypes that others have of them.  As Ann Ferguson shows in her book, Bad Boys: Public Schools in the Making of Black Masculinity, black children, especially boys, are stereotyped as pre-criminals; not adorably naughty, like white boys, but dangerously bad from the beginning.  And studies with children have shown that they often internalize this idea, as in the famous doll experiment in which both black and white children were more likely than not to identify the black doll as bad (see this similar demonstration of white preference on CNNand a discussion of the original doll experiment at ABC).  So I think this terribly sad story of Latarian is showing us how children learn to think of themselves as deviant and bad from the society around them.  Latarian, remember, is seven, just like Preston.  They’re both children, but they are being treated very differently, as these programs illustrate, and it is already starting to sink in.

    I highly recommend viewing the video’s, its shocking how different the treatment is for boys who do almost the exact same thing.

  15. 1 year ago 

    Don’t Look so Surprised (or Dark)

    An interesting post over on Sociological Images points out to a general blind spot in media coverage of the Facebook ‘skin lightening app’ made by Vaseline; corporations in the West are reproducing and monetizing anxieties about color:

    The desire for light skin, then, is being encouraged by corporations who stand to profit from color-based anxieties that are overtly tied to the supposed superiority of Western culture.  These corporations, it stands to be noted, are not Indian.  They are largely Western: L’Oreal and Unilever are two of the biggest companies.  The supposedly Indianpreference for light skin, then, is being stoked and manufactured by companies based in countries populated primarily by light-skinned people.

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